Elm Creek Quilts [12] The Winding Ways Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Shortly after their second anniversary, Diane and Tim bought a charming home a few blocks south of campus in a neighborhood populated by Waterford College professors and administrators. The gray stone house with a sloped roof and Tudor woodwork backed up to the Waterford College arboretum, insuring lots of shade and privacy. It was only after Mary Beth’s family moved in four years later that their domestic tranquility was shattered.

  Diane had tried to be friendly to her new neighbors and took over a plate of lemon squares after the Callahans moved in. She understood that Mary Beth was busy unpacking and wasn’t miffed when her new neighbor didn’t invite her in to chat. But the very next week, Diane returned from the grocery store to discover to her horror that Mary Beth had dug up a row of forsythia bushes Diane had planted the previous spring. Mary Beth claimed that according to the lot survey the former owners had shown them, the bushes were actually on the Callahans’ side of the property line. “I had no idea they were yours,” Mary Beth exclaimed, her eyes wide with innocence. “What were they doing in our yard, I wonder?”

  Even after Diane called the county and paid for a new survey that confirmed the property line was precisely where the Sonnenbergs had always thought it to be, the damage was done. Worse yet, Mary Beth planted some sort of berry bush in place of Diane’s forsythia, and the birds who feasted on the tiny blue fruit dropped obnoxious thank-you cards all over the Sonnenbergs’ red-brick patio. For two months Diane grimly hosed off the splotches every morning until realization smacked her in the face: Mary Beth’s berry bushes were on Diane’s property. Berating herself for her oversight, Diane pruned back the bushes, dug up the stumps, and raked the whole mess onto the Callahans’ lawn. The next day, Mary Beth left a terse letter in Diane’s mailbox demanding reimbursement for the berry bushes. Diane responded with an invoice for new forsythia bushes and soil mix. Mary Beth never paid.

  Even so, Diane felt victorious, never suspecting that she had won only the first battle of an interminable war.

  When Diane’s son and Mary Beth’s became best friends in the second grade, the women’s husbands, who got along just fine, fervently hoped that their wives would seize the opportunity to resolve their differences. Instead, they exercised their dislike in subtler ways, and Diane, at least, tried to keep their sons out of it. Diane almost didn’t join the Waterford Quilting Guild when she overheard at Grandma’s Attic that Mary Beth had been elected president, but since that would have been exactly what Mary Beth wanted, Diane joined anyway. They avoided each other within the larger group, and Diane befriended other guild members who, like her, stayed well outside the periphery of Mary Beth’s inner circle. After a few years of feeling like an outsider in her own guild—and hearing that others felt the same—Diane decided to run for guild president.

  If she had known she was trampling on nearly a hundred years of tradition, she might have kept her mouth shut. Or maybe not, because under Mary Beth’s leadership, the guild had become cliquish and moribund, inviting back the same handful of local speakers every year, running the same block swaps, and hanging the same quilters’ works at quilt shows, showing little variation from one year to the next. The guild’s creativity had so stagnated that Diane could predict with unfailing accuracy which guild members would bring what dishes to the holiday socials and potluck picnics.

  The guild desperately needed change, so perhaps even if Diane had known that incumbents and popular nominees were always allowed to run uncontested, she might still have asked Gwen to nominate her. Mary Beth would have struck back with the same ferocity either way. Diane had refused to be intimidated, even when Mary Beth unfairly used her time at the microphone during guild meetings to promote her own campaign. When Diane protested and asked to be granted equal time, the guild voted to allow each candidate to make a campaign speech on the evening of the election. Diane used her time onstage to emphasize that new leadership would bring a change of pace and fresh ideas, and that if she were elected, she would invite better speakers, direct new workshops, and spend members’ dues more frugally and with more accountability. When it was her turn to speak, Mary Beth kept her remarks unexpectedly brief. She described the accomplishments of her previous terms and then, “for the benefit of my opponent, who may not be aware of what is required of the president,” she read the president’s official duties from the bylaws, punctuating each line with a gesture or facial expression meant to show how unqualified Diane was for that particular task.

  “The president shall prepare the agenda for and preside at quilt guild meetings and shall direct such meetings in a pleasant and professional manner.” A tentative bite of the lower lip, for everyone knew Diane was the reigning queen of sarcasm.

  “The president shall appoint committee chairpersons and coordinate the activities of all the committees.” A worried intake of breath, for Diane could barely keep her purse organized.

  “The president shall be authorized to cosign checks on behalf of the guild.” Eyebrows arched warily, for Diane rarely managed to pay even her own member dues on time.

  “The president shall appoint an ad hoc committee to help coordinate all necessary activities for producing a quilt show.” A helpless shake of the head. “Oh, honestly, ladies, need I go on? Would any of us feel comfortable entrusting our beloved Waterford Summer Quilt Festival to someone who has never won a ribbon?”

  A murmur of dismay swept through the crowd, breaking on the island of motionless calm that was Diane’s friends. One of them squeezed her shoulder, a brief gesture of encouragement, but Diane knew she had lost before the first ballot was cast. She realized then that the guild would never change, and that it would never fulfill its potential to be a fun, energetic, and meaningful group, enriching its members and benefiting the community. So she dropped out of the guild, and her friends left with her. Mary Beth and her cohorts quickly spread rumors that Diane had blackmailed her friends into leaving, and in the frenzied speculation about what dirt Diane might have had on them, everyone forgot the legitimate points Diane’s campaign had raised about problems that threatened the guild’s long-term survival.

  Mary Beth never forgave Diane for stirring up so much conflict and threatening her position. Diane didn’t care. As the years passed, she found more pleasure with the Elm Creek Quilters than she ever had known with the Waterford Quilting Guild—and fresh, new reasons to dislike her next-door neighbor. Once Mary Beth hung wind chimes outside her kitchen window that rang and clanked and banged with the slightest breeze so loudly that Diane and Tim couldn’t sleep at night unless they shut every window facing the backyard. When Mary Beth refused to take them down, Diane researched city noise ordinances, discovered that Mary Beth was risking a fine, and threatened to turn her in. Mary Beth took her revenge two years later when the Sonnenbergs built a skateboard ramp in their backyard, unaware of codes restricting recreational construction in their historic neighborhood. Mary Beth was not content to merely threaten Diane; she filed a complaint with the city, who ordered the Sonnenbergs to dismantle the ramp.

  Their most recent spat occurred when Mary Beth refused to announce the Elm Creek Quilters’ request for help with Sylvia’s bridal quilt, even though many members of the guild knew Sylvia personally and would have gladly contributed a block. Indignant, Diane snuck into a guild meeting, lured Mary Beth away from the podium with a fake cell phone call, and made the announcement herself. The guild members were so upset that Mary Beth had refused the invitation without consulting them that she was eventually forced to resign. Mary Beth’s youngest son, Brent, became so enraged that he stole Diane’s keys to Grandma’s Attic and destroyed the shop in a misplaced act of revenge, a twisted act of defending his mother’s honor.

  Brent had aimed for Diane, but he had struck Bonnie. It was so unfair, so wrong, that Diane wished her friends were sterner taskmasters. Working at Elm Creek Manor was hardly punishment enough; the vandals performed the same duties as Diane’s own two sons, only less competently and without pay. If it had been up to her,
she would have sentenced them to hard time.

  How could anyone take their punishment seriously if it went on hiatus at the end of the summer? Already it was the last week of camp, with only one more week until the juvenile delinquents who destroyed Grandma’s Attic would be temporarily released from their commitment. One more week for Brent, Will, and Greg to learn a valuable lesson, if they let themselves, and one more week for Diane’s own sons to earn spending money for the upcoming school year. One more week—Diane choked back a tearful sigh—until Diane and Tim would load up the car and drive their youngest son to Princeton.

  It seemed only five minutes ago that Todd had been running through the sprinkler, learning how to ride a bike without training wheels, reading comic books under the covers with a flashlight—and now, before she could catch her breath, he was leaving for his first year of college. She was so proud of him she thought her heart couldn’t contain all she felt, but it pained her to think of his empty room, his empty chair pulled close to the breakfast table. She liked to joke about how their grocery bill would plummet, how she would no longer have to do laundry three times a week; in truth, she would gladly fill her hours with the tedious chores she had spent the last twenty years decrying if it meant her boys were home again, and that everything was still ahead of her.

  How was she supposed to fill the hours once the boys were out of the house, after quilt camp ended for the summer and she had no place to go each morning? Once she would have asked Bonnie for extra shifts at Grandma’s Attic, but with the quilt shop gone, Diane faced a long, cheerless, empty winter, counting the days between Todd’s visits home. At least Michael, a junior at Waterford College sharing a rented house downtown with a few other students, would continue his weekly visits home to do his laundry and have supper with his parents, so she would not feel entirely abandoned. But what of the other six days of the week?

  “Get a life,” Diane muttered aloud as she pulled into Agnes’s driveway. Suddenly it occurred to her that that was exactly what she needed to do. It wasn’t her sons’ responsibility to give her meaning and purpose. That washer job. She could sit around and mope, or she could plot a new route for herself, following one of the shaded footpaths she had glimpsed in passing as she faithfully trod the well-traveled road of motherhood. Now she would have more time for herself and for Tim, for Elm Creek Quilts and for her friends. Wasn’t that what she had always said she wanted?

  Why didn’t the prospect of so much freedom cheer her?

  Agnes emerged from the house and waved, her blue eyes cheerful behind her pink-tinted glasses. “Last week of camp,” she declared, smiling, as she settled into her seat and buckled herself in. “What a summer it’s been. So much change, so much upheaval.”

  “So many good-byes,” Diane grumbled, setting out for Elm Creek Manor. “With more to come.”

  “Oh, Diane,” said Agnes sympathetically. “I know you’re going to miss Todd.”

  “That’s the understatement of the month.” Yes, he would come home for school breaks, but she would not pretend things would be the same. Todd was setting forth upon a one-way journey from home into the greater world, and she doubted he would be content to settle down in Waterford afterward as she had done. He would soon come to think of his childhood home as his parents’ home, and himself a welcome visitor within it as he built a wonderful life for himself elsewhere.

  And this was what she wanted for him, although it meant a loss to herself.

  “You and Gwen should talk,” Agnes said. “You’re both sending children off to school, and I imagine you’re both feeling a sense of loss. You could help each other through it.”

  “Gwen doesn’t really know what I’m going through,” said Diane. “She had Summer around a lot longer than I had Todd.”

  “I suppose you’re right. You’re suffering much more than Gwen is.” Agnes’s voice carried a trace of amusement. “Even so. You have Tim at home, and Michael is still in Waterford, for now. Gwen is on her own.”

  “Gwen isn’t on her own,” said Diane. “She has the Elm Creek Quilters.”

  And so did Diane.

  The Elm Creek Quilters who lived in the manor joined the campers for breakfast, but those who lived elsewhere usually arrived after the meal was finished, just in time to prepare for their first classes of the day. Diane had time to stop by the kitchen to fill her favorite mug with coffee before meeting her Beginning Piecing students in the apple orchard. When the weather was fair, Diane couldn’t stand to be shut up within four walls, so she and her students would spread old blankets on the ground and hold their class in the shade of the leafy boughs. Her students reveled in the relaxed, casual atmosphere of her outdoor classroom. At this time of the year, crisp, ripe apples dangled temptingly overhead as they practiced their running stitches or learned how to sew curves. Sylvia allowed her guests to eat as many apples as they liked, and after class, most of Diane’s students returned to the manor with an apple in hand and an extra tucked inside a tote bag for a friend.

  Diane enjoyed teaching beginning quilters—but not, as her friends teased, because they were the only campers whose skills did not surpass her own. She enjoyed encouraging them to take their first tentative stitches and shared their glow of accomplishment when they competed their first hand-pieced blocks. She knew she had a way of teasing the fear out of them when they were reluctant to try something that seemed too difficult. She found respite in the slower pace, the attention to fundamental skills, the wisdom that came in being absorbed by the process of the craft, rather than seeking the quickest route to the end product. Gathering novices around her in a circle in the shade of the apple trees, Diane felt connected to generations of women before her who had passed along their knowledge and wisdom, affection and encouragement. This, she believed, was the essence of Elm Creek Quilts, the fostering of community the heart of their mission.

  Her own initiation into the quilting world had embraced these principles, for she had been fortunate to find a patient teacher with a gift for clear explanations and gentle critiques. If her virtuous teacher had known why Diane had suddenly become so determined to learn, however, she might have given her stubborn pupil a scolding along with her lessons.

  Her mother had quilted, and her mother before her; Diane could only guess how many other quilters claimed even higher branches on her family tree. Even the kindly lady who babysat her, Agnes Emberly, knew how to create soft, snuggly quilts with the most beautiful appliquéd flowers Diane had ever seen. Yet somehow, growing up surrounded by quilts and the women who made them, Diane had not had the slightest inclination to learn to sew. Why should she invest months or years into making a single quilt when so many other people were happy to make quilts for her?

  She was grown, married, and the mother of two before the urge to quilt seized her. One summer day, Agnes, who had become a trusted friend, invited Diane to accompany her to the Waterford Summer Quilt Festival. Diane’s sons, nine and eleven at the time, were off at day camp, so she gladly accepted.

  In the sunny library atrium, quilts of all descriptions hung in neat rows from tall wooden stands. Quilters and quilt lovers alike strolled through the rows, admiring patchwork and appliquéd pieces both large and small, in every attractive color combination imaginable, and a few that Diane thought should have been left to the imagination. She and Agnes viewed each quilt in turn, reading the program for the artists’ names and their thoughts on their work. Quilt guild members wearing white gloves mingled through the crowd, ready to turn over an edge so onlookers could examine a quilt’s backing, where the fine quilting stitches appeared more distinctly than on the patterned top.

  Although Agnes was too modest to consider herself a master quilter, she had built up an impressive store of knowledge over the years, and whenever Diane lingered before an especially remarkable work, Agnes murmured an analysis of its pattern, design elements, and construction techniques. With Agnes’s help, even Diane’s inexpert eye could distinguish between a truly challenging pattern
that tested the maker’s skills and one that merely appeared difficult, but could be assembled rather easily if one knew the technique. Diane learned how subtle variations in color and contrast added intriguing complexity to relatively basic patterns, and how uninspired fabric choices detracted from otherwise technically masterful quilts.

  Some of the quilts were just plain bizarre. “I could have made that,” Diane said, loudly enough for Agnes to hush her. “Look at all those threads she forgot to trim. Your flowers are always perfectly smooth.”

  “I do needle-turn. This is raw-edge appliqué,” murmured Agnes. “It’s a particular technique.”

  “I get it,” said Diane. “Do something badly and fend off criticism by calling it a technique.”

  Agnes took her by the elbow and steered her away from the quilt. “The artist or her best friend or her mother might have been standing right behind you.”

  Before Diane could protest that if the quilter didn’t want feedback she shouldn’t have entered her quilt in a show, she stopped short, captivated by a stunning quilt at the end of the aisle. It was a simple arrangement of twenty-four blocks in six rows of four, with a narrow blue inner border framed by a scrappy pieced outer border. She did not recognize the pattern, which resembled a star with a square in the center overlying a cross. The horizontal and vertical crossbars seemed to create a woven net that captured the sparkling stars. But it was the quilt’s colors that charmed her the most. What at first glance appeared to be simply reds, blues, and greens actually ranged in each color from a soft pastel to the true, clear hue. The colors were restful to look upon, contented and happy, as if the quilt knew a reassuring secret that it meant to share.

  “It’s simply gorgeous,” said Diane, soaking in the peaceful feelings the quilt inspired.

  “It certainly deserves that ribbon,” Agnes remarked.